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I’M not sure exactly how many people ran in the New York City marathon yesterday. I’ve seen figures of 40,000 and 45,000. According to the New York Times‘ On The Run blog, 18,000 dined at Tavern on the Green in Central Park at the marathon eve dinner. But I reached Central Park at 90th Street just before 1 p.m.—more than two hours after the race had begun, and way after Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai had crossed the finish line in a record-breaking 2 hours, 5 minutes and 5 seconds—and the pavement was still being pounded by an unending streak of runners. Spectators squeezed together on the sidewalks, some waving flags and pom-poms, some brandishing cameras (like me), and others yelling encouragement at brief intervals. The enthusiasm was so infectious it made me feel like even I could do it (I can’t).

Here are a few shots I took:

Children waving flags at the runners

Running woman

Man running with Irish flag

This man ran with a large U.S. flag during the 2011 New York City marathon

Receding runners in black and white

I tried to capture a sense of movement, a feel of the sunshine, and some of the enthusiasm that was in the air that day. Enjoy!

P.S. If the marathon passed you by entirely (wait—there was a marathon in the city yesterday? How come no one told me?), check out this cool video made by compressing photographs of the marathon taken by Benjamin Norman into a one-minute composite.

Travelogues

When confronted by great white sharks a few feet away from our boat, jaws dropped open and a collective “wow” swept the onlookers. We forgot everything we had seen in scary movies and on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and just stared.

One of the seven wonders of the modern world, the limestone structure that is the Kukulcán pyramid looms at the centre of the vast public ground in Chichén Itzá, the ancient Mayan city in the heartland of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Most rapids seemed to be named after people who had died or were rescued at the last minute from a terrible fate. Maybe someone long ago had thought that it would add to the thrill of rafting down the river, but to me it seemed rather depressing. I shivered in the sunlight.

“Cookies for the survivors!” yelled Nelson cheerfully as we climbed up a muddy slope made slippery by the driving tropical rain. It was not the right sentiment to warm the hearts of the dozen or so tourists about to voluntarily zip from treetop to treetop 400ft above the ground.